Link customization

You have the ability to customize multiple parts of the Link UI from the Plaid developer Dashboard.

You can create multiple Link customizations in order to show different versions of Link to different users. For example, you can show an English-configured customization to users who have set their language to English, and a French-configured customization to users who have set their language to French.

To create a customization, access the Customize menu within the Plaid developer Dashboard. You can then create a new customization by clicking on the drop-down menu in the upper right and selecting create a config. Or, to create a customization based on an existing customization, open the settings pane, accessible via the gear icon in the upper-right corner of the Link customization page, and use the Duplicate button. From the settings pane, you can also modify the countries and languages the customization applies to, as well as change its name.

To use a customization, set the link_customization_name parameter to the customization name when calling /link/token/create.

Via the dashboard, you can configure the following settings:

You can configure the color scheme used by Link to match your company's brand colors or website color scheme via the Background Color setting.

You can change the text shown on some of the screens to customize the wording to your app. This setting can be configured via the Consent, Institution Select, Institution Search, Connected and Re-Connected settings.

You can select the language Link will appear in, as well as the countries it should support, on the settings pane, accessible via the gear icon in the upper-right corner. The list of countries selected will control which institutions are displayed in Link, as well as whether the OAuth pane will appear. The language setting will determine the default strings used in the Link UI. If you want to customize the translation, you can edit the strings, as described in the Text strings section above.

Language and country are also specified via /link/token/create, using the country_codes and language parameters. It is important that the /link/token/create parameters and customization settings match each other. If the language specified via language does not match the language selected for the customization, the customization will not be applied. If the country codes specified via country_codes do not match the country codes selected for the customization, the country codes selected for the customization may be overridden.

Supported languages: English, French, Spanish, and Dutch

Supported countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Ireland, Spain, France, and Netherlands

Plaid recommends a default list of financial institutions whose logos are shown on the bank selection screen. This list is personalized based on user data, such as location. This option is automatically enabled; the Automatic option is pre-selected in the Institution Select setting.

Alternatively, you can customize the list of institutions by choosing the Custom option, but this option may result in lower conversion.

The Select Account setting allows you to better understand which user accounts to work with. Link gives you access to all of a user's supported accounts at a given financial institution, but sometimes you might not want to use them all with your application. For example, if your user is linking a bank account to Plaid to support ACH funds transfer to or from their bank account, you might want to let them select a specific account to use, rather than enabling all of their checking and savings accounts for funds transfer. Select Account is required when using ACH with a Plaid partner. When enabled, the Select Account pane will display once the user has successfully authenticated and is the final step of the Link flow.

Select Account can be configured to allow either one account or multiple accounts to be selected.

If Select Account is enabled, the Connected pane will be skipped and the onSuccess() callback will fire after the end-user selects their account(s). The selected accounts will be specified in the accounts property of the onSuccess() callback.

Note that Item data will still be available for all accounts via the API, even if the account was not selected via Select Account. The exception is for Items created via Auth's Automated Micro-deposits and Same Day Micro-deposits flows: the API will only provide account data for the selected account.

The Consent pane is what users see when first entering Plaid Link and where they consent to the end-user privacy policy. Plaid now offers the option to select whether Plaid branding or a combination of your branding and Plaid’s is featured. This latter option includes the ability to upload a brand color as well as a brand logo.

All customers will automatically be migrated to this new version of the Consent pane in Q4 2021, but you can follow the instructions below to opt-in early.

In addition to selecting the Consent pane branding, you'll notice that there are some UI changes to the existing pane, including standardizing headlines based on which products Link is initialized with.

The new version of the Consent pane is only available to Link customization settings targeting the US and Canada.

All customers will automatically be migrated to the new version of the Plaid-branded Consent pane in November 2021 if they don’t take any action. You can follow the instructions below to opt-in early to either version of the updated Consent pane. After November 2021, you will continue to be able to change the branding featured on the pane.

To enable the new version of the Consent pane, go to your Link customization or create a new one (you may duplicate an existing customization by using the duplicate feature) and click on the Version 2.0 tab:

Within the Version 2.0 configuration page, you can choose to activate the new Plaid-branded Consent pane or the co-branded Consent pane.

If you choose the co-branded experience, you will see a box that will guide you to choosing your logo, and if you wish, a brand color that will be used for the loading screen. You must upload a logo (1024 x 1024 png file) to use the co-branded experience. You can upload a logo or brand color directly within the Consent experience:

Or you can make the same changes within the Team Settings page:

Once you are done configuring your new Consent pane, click Publish and your new changes will go into effect. If you want to downgrade to the previous experience, you can do so at any time by clicking the Version 1.0 tab and clicking Publish.

Several other settings exist to configure Link, outside of the customization pane.

Account filters allow you to select which account types and subtypes will be available in Link. For example, if you only want users to link a checking account, you can use Link to display only Items that contain checking accounts. This setting will apply to both the Select Account view and the Institution Select view.

Account filters can be configured via the account_filters parameter when creating a Link token. For details, see /link/token/create. If you are using a legacy public-key implementation instead, account filters can be configured during Link initialization using the accountSubtypes parameter. For details, see Maintaining a legacy public-key integration.

Account types and subtypes that are not compatible with the products used to initialize Link will be automatically omitted and do not require an account filter setting. For details on account type and subtype compatibility, see the Account type / product support matrix.

The returning user experience can be enabled to create a streamlined Link experience for users who have already connected a financial account with Plaid. To learn more, see Returning user experience.

Plaid provides some recommendations for best practices in terms of configuring Link, including configuring Link customizations. For more information, see Link best practices.